


Colorful

by WahlBuilder



Category: The Technomancer (Video Game)
Genre: Carnival, Holidays, Love, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-11
Updated: 2019-01-11
Packaged: 2019-10-08 09:07:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17383691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WahlBuilder/pseuds/WahlBuilder
Summary: Melvin attends the Noctian Carnival for the first time.





	Colorful

The brush tickles his lips but he keeps still. Sofia pulls back, her head tilted to the side, probably assessing her work. He looks at her and asks, “What does Noctis play?”

She frowns. “You shouldn’t speak yet, I’m not finished.” She leans to him to drag the brush over his bottom lip again. “What do you think is heard farther than anything on the plains?”

Then she gives him a mirror, and, looking at the only vaguely familiar face, he forgets to ask further.

***

The throngs on the streets are enormous, though Melvin feels it more than he sees it. The storm is howling above, and he can’t help looking up where, in the darkness, the shutters are everything that stands between the city and the roaring anger of Mars.

But people around him don’t seem concerned.

It is dark, the sort of dark he has never experienced before (he imagines this is the dark that they say appears in the depths of the Labyrinth, the one that has left its wet black mark on Dandolo’s shoulder) — alive and moving; the colorful lanterns hung everywhere, carried in people’s hands cannot battle it. But they are not here to do that.

They invite the darkness to walk among them.

They say that under any mask, any painted face you might meet the One With Black Eyes.

Melvin isn’t wearing a mask, and the paintwork is simple on his face, and his purple tunic doesn’t have any patterns. He feels like it fits him well, this simplicity. He feels well.

The people around him recognize him, but don’t touch him — not because he’s a pariah, but because somehow it’s gotten out that he doesn’t like to be touched by strangers. Noctians show affection in other way, calling his name.

His name.

His _other_ name.

In the distance, on upper levels, spheres of lights are moving, seemingly in the air. Melvin tilts his head back until it aches, taking it all in, it all in: the clothes, the brights masks, most with beaks. Tries to recognize birds: a stork, a hawk… The Caravanserail has donned flags flapping in the wind that tears into Noctis, bringing laughter, ruffling clothes. Only Noctians would laugh in a storm.

The main Palatial stair is in darkness. It is strange, Melvin has gotten used to the lights burning by the Palace, a signal of home, of Prince being home. Melvin settles slightly away from the crowds on a boulder which someone draped with cloth that he cannot tell the color of, with all the lanterns flowing past him.

Something shifts: the movement doesn't stop, but Melvin has gotten used to it. To feeling Noctis. Noctis listens. Noctis waits.

He remembers the question he hasn't gotten the answer for. What does Noctis play?

The lanterns fade, the noise of the people gives way to the howling of the storm. Charge rises in Melvin and he sits up. He feels it, the darkness, flowing, walking among them, winds touching his face, sand trickling into the city.

What is the sound of Noctis?

Lanterns are turned off, on the upper levels, on the ground, waves of darkness rolling in.

The howl of the storm, and the dark.

And then, the howl is answered. A single note, born from the canyon, low but rising, flies and bounces between walls, echoes doubling, amplifying. Another note answers, from above, and another, and another, or maybe it’s one long note that bounces and flies and twists…

Melvin’s heart beats faster.

The notes turns into an echo, fly further into the canyon.

And drums start beating.

The first strike is groundbreaking, and blue lights flare on the stairs with the sound. And then again, and again, and again, and Melvin realizes that in fact, the lights are beating inside the drums. Each strike makes the three great drums flare like giant jellies; the drummers behind them only shadows — and each beat raises a cloud of color into the air, green and blue and crimson.

The horns blow again — one low, continuous note, in harmony with the howl of the wind — and in the faded lights here and there Melvin sees the hornblowers: in mouths of small caves, on perches, among the people, one on a ledge high up the central column of the Caravanserail. Another just outlined behind the colorful clouds over the drummers.

The note breaks — and the drums change rhythm, and other drums, with a higher, flatter pitch, join in, the musicians hidden among people here and there.

Melvin looks at the stairs again: new figures are there, three of them, a few steps under the great drums, holding big colorful fans. The drums beat — and the figures bring the fans down, up, the direction and pace of their movement changing with every strike, and behind the fans trail more colored dust. Melvin watches in astonishment, his pulse following the rhythm, the howl of winds singing with the horns, and he sees that the movement of fans is not random, it spreads, drags, pulls, commands the colorful dust — forming the cloud into an image, the great _Ocio_.

The crowd cheers.

When the dancers lower the fans, letting the dust hang and blur, Melvin’s eyes are drawn to the dancer in the middle. In the uncertain lights, it is only possible to say that they are taller than the dancers flanking them, the lines of their body smudged somehow, like the cloud in front and above them — but the bright golden line of their mouth and the thick golden lines under their eyes seem to glow on their own.

Melvin watches and listens as Noctis joins the storm.

His heart beats with the rhythm of Noctis.

***

He comes to his senses slowly when a burst of music nudges him into awareness. Melvin blinks, blinks again, and reaches the conclusion that the colorful lights dancing some distance ahead of him are actually lanterns. He isn’t sure where he is: he is seated on something relatively soft, like a pillow, and sand rustles under his sandals.

He watches the lights for some time. Somewhere away, a flute and a horn are tangled in a swirl of sound.

His legs are thrumming, indicating that he has either walked for a long time — or danced. He remembers… something of the sort, though before this, marching during the Dowser’s Day parade is the closest he came to dancing. The sweet taste in his mouth and a certain blurriness to his senses tell him he must have had some wine, too. The taste is of bitter chocolate and lavender. The only one of his senses that is heightened is touch: a slight breeze caresses his heated cheeks, makes his soft tunic whisper over his skin. He shivers from pleasure.

“Enjoying the Carnival?”

He smiles, then turns to Dandolo.

But it must be the night playing tricks, or perhaps he’s less sober than he thought — because, with an orange lantern in hand, before him stands that dancer who has caught his attention at the stairs. Tall, broad, with a shimmering cloak wrapped about him, a band of zigzags trimming the bottom of it. The skin that Melvin can see has a strange, shimmering quality, as though… As though dust, blue and crimson and glimmering, has been thrown over him, over his hands, his face, his hair, mixing into various hues of purple. And then, there is the gold, generous on the lower lip, and in two broad lines under the eyes, flying to the temples, bringing up the green in the eyes to a magnetic gleam…

The dancer moves, and a crystal sound brings Melvin’s attention to the tiny bells sparkling in the mass of braids.

“Dandolo…” Melvin breathes out. That dancer, this… this _vision_ , is Dandolo, his…

“Yes. It is I.” Dandolo’s voice is low and warm, a golden smear against the various sounds of the Carnival, beckoning to Melvin.

Melvin gets up, and they lean to each other, so simple. Melvin has to put a hand on Dandolo’s for balance. So soft.

He doesn’t want the kiss to stop, he wants to taste further — but Dandolo pulls back. Not far. Smiles. The gold on his lips is smeared with silver now. “Silver becomes you, _corvo_ ,” Dandolo purrs. His breath is sweet and intoxicating.

Melvin would let him kiss all the silver off of himself — but the line of blue going down Dandolo’s throat and disappearing under the cloak catches Melvin’s attention. He puts a hand on Dandolo’s neck — Dandolo inhaling sharply from the spark… His skin is hot, soft. Melvin runs a thumb down the blue, over the vulnerable hollow of his throat, smearing the color.

“How far…” His voice stops, and he swallows and tries again, “Is the powder…” He can’t finish, because Dandolo’s hand not holding the lantern moves under the cloak — and the shimmering cloth slides down his shoulders, disappearing in the darkness at their feet.

The blue and the crimson and the mix of purple cover all of Dandolo’s chest, and his chest is rising and falling and… And… Although most of the scar-tattoos are not visible under the powder, the black mark on his shoulder is clean, looking wet as ever, the light of the lantern and other lights dancing on its surface like stars in the void.

Melvin glides his fingers down Dandolo’s chest, so, so very hot, making a new pattern of swirls, colors, fascinated, until the belt of a kilt sitting low on Dandolo’s hips stops him.

Dandolo chuckles. It’s an intoxicating sound. “All the way, little bird. You may check for yourself.”

He might, oh he might.


End file.
